No, not that wretched show featuring two spoiled rotten brats. I'm referring to my newly simplified telephone wiring, now that aDSL service has finally been turned off.
In early December I subscribed to Verizon's FiOS service and have blogged about it several times. Last week I blogged about the termination of my Earthlink DSL account. But even though my Earthlink account was dead, the carrier, for lack of a better term, was still active on my phone line. I know this because the DSL modem still had green lights for the "modem" and "data" indicators.
The reason this is important is that my DSL installation used in-line filters on all of my telephones. You see, DSL shares the same copper wire that provides your phone service, but uses frequencies that are not normally used by voice communications. In order for these two services to co-exist on the same wire you have to plug each telephone into a special dohickey and plug that dohickey into the wall. I'm not exactly sure what would happen if you didn't use the dohickey, but I've never been willing to risk the ire of my wife should the worst happen and my phone got fried. After all, I do have to sleep and we have sharp knives in the house.
Anywho, in my office I have two phone lines (line 2 has the DSL on it) connected in various combinations to 4 devices: a single line phone, a two-line phone, a fax machine, and the DSL modem. The tangle of splitters (and joiners), pair switches, and filter is rather scary.
Today, 7 days after Earthlink stopped accepting my username and password, the modem and data lights have gone dark. With any luck this means that the DSL service has been completely disconnected and I can remove the filters and tangle of wires, replacing them with a single two-line splitter.
I'm so happy! It's the simple things in life that give us the most joy. <sniff>
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still being a DSL guy, I have several DSL filters (I think you used the technical term "doohickey") at each RJ11 outlet.
Each time I call for service (i.e. whenever I "upgrade" and SBC screws something up) they first ask if I have filters at each and every location. They only gave me two single-line filters when I started (5 years ago?), although I have two phone lines - which they'd know if they bothered looking at my SBC bill - so I had to waddle over to Altex and buy my own set of 2-line DSL filters.
In theory, not havnig them wouldn't damage the phones (and fax machines, and satellite receivers), but all those 1's and 0's emitted by the out-of-band DSL frequencies could seep onto the carpet and create quite a mess. I was never willing to risk that, so I did as I was told.
A friend of mine had a DSL filter installed near his NID, so the entire house is filtered and he doesn't need doohickeys at each tap.
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